Bush Official Admits That Administration Tortured Detainees

With congressional Democrats and the Obama campaign struggling to avoid the investigation and prosecution of torture, a Bush official just made it a bit more difficult. Susan J. Crawford has publicly admitted that they did engage in clear torture at Guantanamo Bay. With the hearings for Eric Holder on Thursday, the admission by Crawford could make the torture question hard to avoid. I will be discussing the Holder hearing on Countdown tonight.

Crawford is quoted in the Washington Post as saying “We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani. His treatment met the legal definition of torture.” She explained that “The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for.”

This week I debate this issue with Charles Fried, the Harvard Professor and former solicitor general on Talk of the Nation and discussed the issue on MSNBC Countdown.

With Obama admitting that waterboarding is torture and now both Bush officials and former interrogators admitting that it was torture, the question is how the Democrats can continue in their plan to avoid any prosecution.

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